A substantial shift toward the Palestinian position

Analysis: Obama's State Dept. speech marks a major departure from the long-standing US policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Obama.
(photo credit:Reuters)

US President Obama did a great service in sketching out a new paradigm for American
engagement with the Middle East in his State Department "winds of change" speech
this afternoon, in which he raised the goal of reform and democracy to a
top-tier US interest. Nevertheless, after critiquing Arab regimes that have
used the Arab-Israeli conflict to distract their peoples from the important
business of reform, he undermined the potency and effect of his own message by
unveiling a new -- and controversial -- set of principles guiding US efforts
to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Specifically, the peace process
principles he articulated constitute a major departure from long-standing US
policy. Not only did President Obama's statement make no mention of the
democracy-based benchmarks injected into this process by President Bush in his
June 2002 Rose Garden speech (which might have been appropriate, given the
overall theme of his speech), he even included a significant departures from the
"Clinton Parameters" presented to the parties by the then president in December
2000:

* President Obama is the first sitting president to say that the final
borders should be "based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps." (The
Clinton Parameters – which, it is important to note, President Bill Clinton
officially withdrew before he left office -- did not mention the 1967 borders,
but did mention "swaps and other territorial arrangements.") The Obama
formulation concretizes a move away from four decades of US policy based on UN
Security Council resolution 242 of November 1967, which has always interpreted
calls for an Israeli withdrawal to a "secure and recognized" border as not
synonymous with the pre-1967 boundaries The idea of land swaps, which may very
well be a solution that the parties themselves choose to pursue, sounds very
different when endorsed by the president of the United States. In effect, it
means that the US view is that resolution of the territorial aspect of the
conflict can only be achieved if Israel cedes territory it held even before the
1967 war.

* Regarding IDF deployment, President Obama said that the
Palestinian state should have borders with Egypt, Jordan, and Israel, and
referred to the "full and phased" withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces. This
statement implies categorical American opposition to any open-ended Israeli
presence inside the future Palestinian state. This differs from the Clinton
Parameters, which envisioned three Israeli "facilities" inside the West Bank,
with no time limit on their presence.

* Although the president noted that
he was endorsing a borders-and-security-first approach, leaving the subjects of
refugees and Jerusalem for future negotiations, this is an odd reading of the
relevance of those two issues. For Palestinians, the refugee issue may be
powerfully emotive, going to the core of Palestinian identity; for Israelis,
however, it is as much an issue of security as ideology. For the president not
to repeat previous US government statements -- e.g., that Palestinians will
never see their right of return implemented through a return to Israel -- is to
raise expectations and inject doubt into a settled topic.

Perhaps more
than anything else, the most surprising aspect of the president's peace process
statement was that it moved substantially toward the Palestinian position just
days after the Palestinian Authority decided to seek unity and reconciliation
with Hamas. Indeed, the president seemed nonplussed that Mahmoud Abbas,
president of the Palestinian Authority, has opted for unity with Hamas, a group
the United States views as a terrorist organization. This reconciliation with
Hamas "raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel," the president noted
-- but evidently not questions so profound and troubling to the United States
that they would impede a shift in US policy that advantages the
Palestinians.

Also odd was the fact that the president offered no
implementation mechanism to translate these ideas into real negotiations. He
named no high-level successor to Sen. George Mitchell, the peace process envoy
who just resigned, nor did he specifically call for the immediate renewal of
negotiations.

Despite this absence of a new mechanism, the likely next
step is for Palestinians to take up the president's call, ask for renewal of
negotiations on precisely the terms the president outlined -- borders that are
"based on the 1967 lines with mutual swaps," with no reference to refugees or
other issues on which the Palestinians would make major compromises -- and wait
for Israel to say no.

Now en route to Washington, Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu has already issued a statement objecting to the president's focus on
the 1967 borders. The two leaders may find a way to blur their differences over
the principles outlined today, given their partnership on strategic issues and
mutual interest in political cooperation and amity. But the approach to
Israeli-Palestinian peace enunciated today has within it the seeds of deepening
tension and perhaps even rift between the two sides -- the very distraction from
the focus on democratic reform the president said he wanted to
avoid.

Robert Satloff is executive director of The Washington Institute,
for whom this "policy watch" article was written. www.washingtoninstitute.org